5/21/2010 @ 5:04PM

Skype's Growth Strategy

It took Skype several years, but the popular Internet communications service provider may have finally devised a growth strategy.

The company plans to roll out corporate subscription packages in the fall that will include new tools for IT managers, Skype-equipped televisions suited for conference rooms and other products and services. Currently 37% of Skype calls are business-related. That means most of Skype’s traffic consists of personal communications between family members and friends, who pay little–often nothing–to use the service. The Luxembourg-based company, which says it has 560 million users worldwide, generated $716 million in revenues in 2009. Former owner
eBay
sold Skype to a private equity company last fall for $1.9 billion.

David Gurlé, vice president and general manager of Skype’s business unit, says Skype is still finalizing corporate subscription rates and could not say how much these subscriptions would add to the company’s revenues. However, he estimates that business customers bring in 20% to 30% more revenue than regular consumers. Gurle also notes that corporate subscriptions likely will consist of monthly recurring fees and priced according to tiers of services and bundles of features.

Although Skype plans to debut its corporate packages in October, the company this week launched a free trial of Skype Manager, a service that will be included in subscriptions. Skype Manager is an online portal that lets IT administrators oversee Skype users by department (sales, marketing), purchase credits for Skype “airtime” and view reports on Skype usage and costs company-wide.

Eventually, Skype Manager will allow IT administrators to control all staff usage of Skype, including routing Skype calls through office phones and setting up multi-party audio or video chats. It will also be a place where IT specialists can chat with each other in online forums and request and vote on new Skype features.

Gurlé says Skype’s new business services will complement offerings from enterprise stalwarts like
Cisco
or
Avaya
. “We want to make companies’ existing infrastructure better,” he says. For instance, organizations with
Verizon
cellphones will be able to support Skype mobile applications on them and supervise their use via Skype Manager.

Skype’s other selling point will be the same one used to lure regular users: cost savings. Skype has asked LG Electronics and Panasonic to make corporate versions of their recently released, Skype-equipped consumer televisions. These TVs will be paired with high-definition cameras to create videoconferencing systems thousands of dollars cheaper than the setups Cisco or
Polycom
sell.

To marshal all these plans, Gurlé is both staffing up and relocating. He has been poaching executives from his former employer,
Microsoft
, and will move his team to Palo Alto, Calif., this summer or fall. Before the end of the year he wants to establish three new ways to sell Skype to businesses: direct sales for medium-to-large companies, indirect sales for small-to-medium companies and partnerships with manufacturers who want to offer Skype as a bundled package with their own gadgets (such as the TVs).

Will chief information officers and IT administrators respond? Gurlé is optimistic they will see Skype as a “communication tool that transcends corporate barriers.” He adds, “There are not many companies that excel in both the consumer and business markets, but we are in this for the long-term.”